food

I mentioned to family and friends a while ago that I was going to write a blog about my Australian eating experiences. The problem with this proposition was that the sensory rush that one feels when consuming a pork and rosemary pizza (oh what a rush-- the sweet pig and I reunited) tends to fade rather quickly once one returns to rice and white beans on a regular basis.

So I am here to do a sort of fusion-blog (and I hope you appreciate the gastronomic tie-in there), covering Turkish and 'other' food experiences.

Recently I have been pleased to discover nice Turkish food. This is a rather sacreligious call in the expat community, as we are duty bound to declare love for all things oily and patlican on stepping foot into Attaturk, as far as I can tell. However, a diet of school cafeteria versions of 'classic' Turkish food did its bit to put me off for a good time. I thought I just didn't really like Turkish food, and it is still true that I don't think it is really my favourite 'cuisine' on the whole. However, I have definately developed a taste for lightly grilled onion and smoky eggplant (actually I already like the latter), and am a big fan of pizza with hazelnuts, otherwise known as fındık lahmacun. I also like the Turkish approach to restaurant eating. The food tends to come in little segments that have to be properly rolled, sprinkled, peeled and/or mushed together in order for the proper effect to be acquired. (This is another reason I think I didn't 'get it' right away-- white beans and rice is HEAPS better with the red pepper spice and minty herbs, olive oil and pomegranate oil... perhaps obviously, in retrospect.) I like this because it makes me feel that bit more native when I know which bread goes with what, but also because it seems to reflect something of the approach to daily business that I witness in other contexts here-- that is that food and eating does not have to be all that accessible to be appreciated and enjoyed. It's not really that simple to eat, and no-one gets to ask for the burger/pasta version that can just be shovelled down with a fork. It can be messy and somewhat complicated to share köfte, but no-one is complaining about that or expects it to be otherwise. This goes along with, in my mind, the common and ostentatious use of toothpicks to clean ones teeth afterwards. In both cases the diner ends up rather undignified (according to what I am used to) but of course at the same time, this being 'normal' it isn't so undignified. It seems like a more visceral experience to dining is enjoyed here, and a less pretentious one for it.

Not that the Turkish cuisine advocates or neccessitates an undignified approach to food. Far from it! It's more that the dignity is found in the care and patience with which the meal is prepared and eaten.

Finally, I like the emphasis on sharing. Who doesn't want to get at some of what their neighbour has? Of course Turkey is not alone in cultivating this gastronomic covetousness. But when it is combined with the extra attentive waiter (offering you paper towel every time you drip eggplant juice down your wrist) and the melodramatic Turkish pop star careening in the background, it all starts to feel quite homely.

Australia has its charms too though. First of all, Australia seems to have the heating thing down in a way that much of Europe seems to struggle with. Am I alone in desiring a healthy 20-22* temperature? Turkey is mostly too warm, but in Summer, too cold. Lots of places seem to suffer from Did-you-know-we-can-afford-air-conditioning syndrome, also observed in parts of Asia.

And Australia has pigs. Did I mention that I miss pork?

Other than this, what I like about Australia is my own ability to judge a book by its cover there. My instincts for quality restaurants in a range of 'presentations' is well honed in Australia. I can seek out the cheap but tasty with little trouble, and I am all over the expensive but worth it. Unimpressive but authentic? Got that down too.

By contrast, when I tried to do my usual 'stake out' of the kebab restaurants of Trabzon-- doing the walk by, staying off the main streets, looking for the one most of the Turks went to etc..... I just ended up in a really average restaurant. Twice. I tried Expensive But Worth it in Ortaköy too-- and ended up paying 27 YTL for deep fried cheese spring rolls and nescafe.

Having said this, my radar seems to be improving somewhat with time. Or maybe I am just going to the places I have had luck with more often. But I know I will be returning for some tavuk şiş and dusty, crispy pide from the genial fellows across the road very soon.

Kuafor and other essential Turkish experiences

I am surprised, actually, to realise that I have not yet written about my hairdresser yet, as being able to get a regular duz fön- hair straightening- is one of my favourite things about living here. Most of you know this, so it will come as no surprise that one of the first things I did when I guests left was head down to Serkan Bey and his assistant/makeover girl, whose name shamefully escapes me.

There is, as far as I know, no such thing as a hair appointment in Turkey. Or maybe I just don’t speak enough Turkish to make one. Anyway, the way it works for me is that I turn up and wait for Serkan to finish with whatever other customers he has. This may be none, or I may have to wait for an hour as I did on Tuesday (oops.. know you all know I went twice in one week. First time ever, I promise). So like many things here, it’s not to be done if you are in a rush. But when it is finally my turn, I get a thorough shampooing—Turks don’t use conditioner—and then Serkan rips through my knots with a brush. I think my hair is drying into little shreds of its former self, but when I can get it blow waved once a week, who cares? It sure looks better than it did when it was healthy! Serkan, nor any of the other hairdressers I have been to, thinks much of your pain and blithey tips my head back into place when I am burnt by the brush or wince because he is ripping hair out in knotty chunks. He does do a great end result though, and he charges only 5 YTL (about 5 AUS dollars) for the end result. I also usually get a very sweet cup of nescafe and lots of smiles into the deal. Serkan shows zero interest in learning English or in understanding my Turkish. This is unusual, actually, and I still sometimes ask him how he is or something very simple that I know I say clearly. But as far as Serkan is concerned, I don’t speak Turkish and so he just smiles and keeps brushing. Today, in an unprecedented show of communicativeness, he showed me an article of an Australian getting arrested (I think) in Taksim. But I’m pretty sure he likes me at the end of the day.

On to the eyebrows, also a bargain at 5 YTL a cotton weave. My eyebrows lady, in stark contrast to Serkan, is profusely chatty and bizzarely confident of my grasp of Turkish. She greets me in the street with two kisses and asks me many Turkish questions, to which I usually respond with the Turkish for ‘yes’ or ‘good’. This seems to cover a lot of ground and she also seems to be fairly positive about our relationship. We talk colours, ‘cause we both want to learn them. She approves of a wide variety of possibilities for my hair and is working on getting me to have green or yellow nails (like hers) to go with the blue hair that I once casually admired, and is know firmly on the schedule as far as Serkan s concerned. All of this ‘conversation’ and lack of makes for a fairly surreal experience, frankly, but I suppose it is very memorable and I do get great hair and brows.

Snow in İstanbul

Yes, it has finally arrived, much like the latest blog post. Unfortunately the snow was a couple of hours too late to get me the day off work yesterday but it sure is a pretty way to ruin a weekend. As a Melbourne-ite I am completed bewildered by snow that doesn’t leave when I drive home and have no idea what to do with myself. Do people actually go out in this? I was also perhaps rather late on the wow-check-out-snowflakes bandwagon. They are really intricate! (Where do think they got the picture from? Jackson notes wrily). They are impressive! For anyone else who didn’t notice yet. (Though for all that, kind of... kitsch, don’t you think?) It is a lovely experience.

I have had some visitors of one form or another here for the last two weeks. It has been great to put aside some time to see quite a few of the ‘sites’ of İstanbul after four months here. I even bought a scarf and a lamp at the Grand Bazaar, a ‘traditional’ market filled with English speaking salesmen (‘you will see this lamp in your dreams tonight’ he calls to a sales-wearied Tara) and overpriced goods. Mostly lamps and scarves, actually. Oo and it is the only place where Turkish people have been really really impressed with my Turkish. Also nice.
On to Hagia Sofia and the Blue Mosque—you all have Wikipedia so I will stick with a fairly cursory personal assessment—both better from the outside than in. Although Hagia Sophia has impressive frescoes, if it’s reverence you’re after you’d better go back to Italy. Tour guides give speeches whilst straddling the monuments and there is rather a lot to buy considering it has been a church for thousands of years. But no more; Hagia Sophia, like most Christian churches in İstanbul, is a museum. The Blue Mosque has an inordinate amount of scaffolding and reams of red carpet, a la Morwell Gospel Chapel 1989 for those of you for whom that rings a bell. Considering this one is functioning as a place of worship, I had to agree with Jackson that it was no doubt better for the knees that way. As a footnote, I also feel obligated to pass on that thick black woolen tights do not constitute coverage for my ever-seductive legs, and so I had to wrap a velcro-ing blue sheet around me as well as donning a head-scarf. Elegant.

Better were the Chora Church and the Cisterns... quiet, beautiful and a freaky idea (cisterns, obviously). But those I will leave to the pictures, because it is time to have breakfast.... and I have to make it myself! Yes, scandal/shock/horror, all my guests have left and I will have to go back to cooking and generally acting like I live here. Christmas is over and Amy Winehouse is back on, a bit of melancholy backdrop for good measure. It was a good one!

In favour of Turkey (on Republic Day, no less)

Last weekend was really nice... I went to an island in the Marmara Sea and had a ride in a horse-drawn carriage. Certain colleagues dismissed this as bourgeois... but then, as I like to remind certain people, we are working for a school built by an Eastern-European centred construction corporation.

Going through the usual oscillation of loving İstanbul and all there is to do and see here, and feeling vaguely appalled at the possibility of staying here for another two years, minimum... Some things I do like about this country though
- people think its cute when you try to speak Turkish. (I think). This is great, because cute and mildy entertaining is really all my Turkish can offer right now. In order to practice I find myself saying lots of basically untrue things (tomorrow İ will go to the palace, I like bread, I am tired). These are 'white lies', or something, because I usually am tired-ish, and bread is ok, and I suppose there was some possibility of me visiting the palace. But mostly I said them because I was so proud of the sentence I have learnt.
- I have a very supportive and generous hairdresser. Getting my hair straightened regularly makes me quite happy.
- Kebaps. Cheap, not appalling unhealthy, and everywhere.
- every now and then I come across something that is really very Agatha Christie/Ottomon Empire/Orient Express-ish, and it is so cool to engage with a culture that I never really thought I would. Of course, finding a real-life example of anything that has been romanticised in popular culture, especially the popular culture of your childhood, is a pleasureable experience. But while I was pretty seriously committed to seeing Catherine Gaskin's Ireland, I never really thought about Turkey as a kid. And thus, the 'remembering' of the scene in front of me is kind of sweeter, and less open to disappointment, perhaps!
Ok enough for today.

Expatriates Unite.

Was chatting with a similarly-minded friend (an American one! An endless wonder to me) about the challenges of being an expat as one of our generation. I guess I can begin to capture it by noting that even a sentence like that one makes me want to puke-- the 'challenges' of being an expat? Like, what are THOSE exactly? And of course it's true that we lead comparitively luxurious lives-- even within expatriate communities I know that my own life is so secluded, so insulated from the challenges that many expats face that to speak of difficulties within it might seem indulgent. But that is the very problem-- that for a certain element of the current population it has become very difficult to speak or act AT ALL because we are so painfully self-reflexive about everything we do, and so critical of everything those around us do simultaneously. The things I say and do, let alone write, seem to me to be so riddled with cliche or pretentiousness that it is difficult to make any sort of definitive statements of belief or like or interest. We are so quick and so expert at identifying the 'backpacker' mentality that places the burden of authenticity upon the developing nation's people, or the peace corps ideology that is so self-serving or short-sighted in its realisation that we can hardly appreciate nor contribute to another culture. And don't get me started on the impossibility of critising, or even expressing dislike, for aspects of a foreign culture.

A great deal of this is born out of very sound ideas of not wanting to patronise or simplify complex cultures and peoples. Those are valid and, dare I say it, proper goals. But when they can also lead to the very things that they are supposed to avoid (how patronising is it, for example, to be so fearful of simplifying a culture that you never really engage with it? Isn't criticism of a people in some way related to respect for them?) there needs to be some compromise between the ideals that we know to be sound and the results that we know to be desireable.

So does that mean I should get on board with the 'save the stray cats' movement? Should I admit that köfte totally grosses me out (and to whom?)? Do I refuse to stay in mainstream tourist resorts again because they aren't the real Turkey? Or do I just commit to taking half my phrases out of inverted commas, and declare that some things do not have contested meaning... even some controversial ones. Or maybe, even if they do, I don't care.

And then I go back to the pathetic sense of radicalism that I have just associated with the removal of punctuation... and it starts all over again.

turkish baths, round II

It is the Bayram weekend here in İstanbul, and this means that everyone has a day off and most people are out of the city. What a great time, I thought, to explore the city and see the many sights that I have neglected to do thus far. Things kicked off well with a party at a friends house where I met an ethnic Iranian Jewish Turk (tick!) and a Canadian juggler who made the entire party hold hands to channel some juggling-conducive energy. All good and in the name of fun, until I decided to drink a full glass of water straight from the tap, and so day one of the 'holiday' was spent lolling around on the couch and bathroom floor as my body attempted to rid itself of whatever is kept in the water pipes around here. Not quite the weekend I had envisaged. Just to keep things interesting though, there does seem to be a persistent shot-gun sound that occurs every couple of hours in my compound. No idea what this is, and respond in responsible-adult fashion i.e turn up the repeats of '24' on the telly.

Anyway, the bath. So a colleague and I pick a bath out of this coffee-table-style guide to the 'historic baths and culture of İstanbul', jump on a dolmuş to Sarıyer and hope for the best. As usual, my Turkish is completely inadequate and attempts to ask if we are in Sarıyer is are responded to with 'straight ahead'... so I guess we are going the right way. It is a little frustrating to spend three hours a week in language lesson and realise that the only thing people understand of me is the name of the place we are headed for... which was written on the bus anyway. However, I take heart from a story I heard recently when a man who has lived here for seven years went to an office and starting chattering away in Turkish... only to have the woman behind the desk explain that she didn't speak English. Te he he.

So the fun continues when we get off the bus and ask which way the bath is. Of course the answers that are given do not contain the words I know for straight ahead, left, or right. And so we just keep walking in the direction pointed until we hit another crossroad and ask someone else... with the same result. (Note to you all-- when someone asks for directions in faltering English, use SIMPLE words in your answer!)

Finally we 'arrive' at what looks like a tea house and is surrounded by old men, but is apparently the bath.... we walk up tentatively and step inside. No one around.... we walk back and ask the tea men.... yes it is open. Repeat times two. Finally a man ushers us through a curtain (at which point I realise I must have been walking around the mens area of the bath earlier-- but press on, since I saw nothing) and into a little room with change rooms inside. Due to the fact that the men are not supposed to be anywhere near the women's side, he wants to speak to us in Turkish through a curtain. Do you speak English? I say in perfect Turkish. No I don't speak English, he says in perfect English. Thus ends the usefulness of those phrases.

After a little pointless nattering back and forth and quite a bit of exasperated giggling, he finally gives in and comes through the curtain, knocks on the door to the bath interior and shouts. The door swings open and there, barking instructions in the friendly but brusque Turkish that so many women seem to adopt as the manner of choice, stands a woman about my mother's age, naked except for a saggy skin coloured pair of what looks like thermal undies. Rolled up at the sides, mind you, so the effect is somewhat like that of a saggy boobed baby. We have arrived.

The man steps away and we are shown that the deal is to wear only underwear-- no bras though. Western friend and I are suitably horrified but I decide to obey and come into the bath wearing only the warm plastic flip flops provided, my bathers bottoms and a stiff towel. Next instruction-- towels off!

I make a shamefaced run back to the change rooms where I re-dress into my bathers top.

Charissa and I sit down to be scrubbed, washed and massaged. Or as Charissa later puts it, violated. First we have the pleasure of watching a more-experienced bath go-er strip down and give (all of) her body a thorough once-over. This is confronting enough without considering that we are expected to do the same in a few minutes. And the bathers top doesn't last either. You try maintaining your modesty while a mostly-naked Turkish grandmother yelps at you to take it off. But actually, once we got over the horror of seeing each others boobs get a scrub with a large exfoliating mitt, it was pretty fun. Our bath attendant is unconcerned with our concepts of social niceties, but actually rather jolly in her own way. Learning that I am a teacher and from Reşitpaşa inspires the first slap on my nearly naked butt. And Charissa's nervous giggles inspire her to throw large containers of warm water at her when she's not ready. You kind of can't help but lose your inhibitions after that. She grunts and sighs deeply as she massages us but is undeterred by the digusting sludge that is scrubbed of our bodies in the first wash. And successfully asking her whether she was tired made me so happy that I didn't even flinch when she grabbed my foot and held it between her tummy and naked breasts to finish soaping my leg. Each sections' finish is declaring with a loud and triumphant 'TAMAM!' (ok) and by the end of it all we are both kind of freaked out but definately keen to go again. All in all, it was a great morning.

Touring the Asian side, Japanese Restaurants, etc.

This weekend the americans and I went to visit the Asian side. A much lauded activity by those in the know, and only about 25 steps away from the hip-ness of visiting something on the Eastern side or making a day trip to Syria.

Actually, it was kind of everything people said it would be (more 'asian'/'real') I suppose. It certainly had an atmosphere that the European side doesn't have, and was more like the Asian cities that I went to. I also felt cooler, which is a big plus. Everything was incredibly busy and a lot of things smelt like fish, which is nice in its own way, and there were shops selling loofahs and cinnamon sticks and semi-dried tomatoes (tick!) and loads and loads of people. One of the things that has struck me again and again (perhaps suggesting that I am a little simple) is how MANY PEOPLE THERE ARE. Just like, in the world. Because as you may know, most of them don't live in Australia. I think my comprehensive school had about as many people as my home town, so wade through the masses of people speaking another language is always quite fun. The downside to visiting this last hurrah of authenticity is that the masses of people also take many many buses to get there, and so it took about 80 minutes to do so. I had nostalgic flashbacks of the glory days of Dad running late and doing 120 on Firman's Lane in Hazelwood North and covering what must have been about 25kms in 15m.

Anyway, after recovering from the somewhat traumatic experience of trying to get home from the suburbs, a few of us went out for Japanese food in town. We are led to our table: 'Could we sit outside?' I ask? 'No', my otherwise impeccably well-mannered waiter tells me. This is a little unnerving... I'm not sure if I should ask again but decide to just behave and sit inside. Under the floodlights in one probably one of the most expensive restaurants I've ever been to. Mood lighting is, in my experience, one of the later acquistions of 'developing' countries.

So the sesame seeds were stale, the gyoza basically just chicken mince and it all costs about a month's wages... but it was sushi, my beloved, and so I was happy. Another weekend in Turkey.